The Mech Touch

Janassa Pellier and Tifi Colsone weren't the only ones undergoing culture shock at the moment.

The Voiken siblings were also introduced to the variety of different subcultures that had settled into the Larkinson Clan!

"Are you being serious, commander?"

Commander Valerie Chancy of the Penitent Sisters gave them a rueful smile. "Oh, we are completely serious about this matter. We do not expect you to embrace our words, but that does not make them any less true. The Superior Mother is real. The Superior Mother is a Supreme that is more powerful than any god. The Superior Mother is also the mother of our patriarch and the grandmother of his child. If you don't believe us, then ask Patriarch Ves. If he is in the mood, he may be willing to call down his mother to you. The sooner you get acquainted with the Superior Mother, the sooner you can start with designing our new mechs. Our Valkyrie Redeemer model could use an update."

The legion commander began to recite a whole list of issues that the Penitent Sisters wanted the mech designers to address for the next iteration of this famed model.

Many of the issues mentioned by the Penitent Sister Commander sounded reasonable to Sara and Dulo Voiken. They pertained to ordinary technical specifications such as the range of motion of the Valkyrie Redeemer's arms or the inadequate defensive properties of its round shield.

The two Voiken mech designers both possessed specialties that could offer a lot of potential improvements to the Valkyrie Redeemer design.

Sara couldn't do too much as the Valkyrie Redeemer was an offensive mech model that was on the lighter side of its weight class.

Nonetheless, she could overhaul its armor system and implement a new solution that offered more damage resistance without substantially increasing the mass of the mech.

Dulo Voiken could do a lot more. As a spearman mech specialist, there was much about the Valkyrie Redeemer that he could improve. While he found the mech design to be good in many ways, he could still tell that its designers did not possess a deep understanding of spear-wielding mechs.

If he had free reign over the Valkyrie Redeemer design, he would turn it into a much more formidable combat machine that did not have to rely on charge attacks in order to slaughter its foes!

Yet as Sara and Dulo continued to learn more about the properties of this mech models and its users, it became more difficult for them to accept everything they heard.

They did not try to refute the Penitent Sisters, though. They grew up in a family that was filled with many different mech designers, each of which developed their own unique perspectives on reality. The two Voiken mech designers were a little more accustomed to abnormal behavior.

"Can we examine one of these Valkyrie Redeemers, commander?" Dulo requested.

"Why certainly." Commander Chancy said. "I'll lead you over to our workshop. If you wish to disassemble it, make sure not to strip it down completely."

"For whatever reason?"

"Our Valkyrie Redeemers are living mechs. We have found that they can only truly remain alive if there is a bit of them left intact. Our mech technicians can tell you more about this. Just make sure to never pull our mechs apart completely. Think of them as living bodies. They can only sustain life if there is enough of a basis to do so. This is why we must always care for them and why we do not easily mix and match parts from different mechs together."

That is certainly weird to mech designers such as Sara and Dulo. Of all of the mechs they worked with, they never encountered a situation where they needed to treat mechs as if they were living, breathing organic bodies!

Though the Penitent Sisters generously allowed the Voikens to peek inside one of their Valkyrie Redeemers, there were always mech technicians hovering nearby.

"These Penitent Sisters are too protective of their mechs." Sara frowned as she studied the programming code of the Valkyrie Redeemer's operating system. "They're more than machines to them. They truly buy into Patriarch Ves Larkinson's vision."

"Well, you know what design philosophies are like, sister. They have a way of creating new possibilities."

"I understand that, but there has to be a limit to what is possible with mech designs! How can a mech designer grant life to what is supposed to be a lifeless machine? Where do these glows come from and how can these mechs induce so much fear in enemy mech pilots?"

The Voikens had done their homework so they knew that this mech model and its variants were successfully being employed in a distant war that consumed an entire star sector.

The fact that the two leading mech designers of the Larkinson Clan managed to design a mech that was able to compete against other military mechs was a great accomplishment!

Yet now that they finally got to tinker with a Valkyrie Redeemer, they came no closer to a satisfying answer!

"I can understand what Madame Gloriana Wodin has brought to this mech design. Her design approach is easier to follow." Sara frowned. "What is less clear is what Patriarch Ves Larkinson added to this mech design. I can clearly feel its glow, but there is no obvious source of this effect!"

"Have you tried asking the Penitent Sisters?"

"They all say that we're basking in the presence of the Superior Mother."

There was no way the Voikens could embrace this claim at face value.

"What about their so-called battle formations?" Dulo asked. "Is there a reasonable explanation for their ability to unleash giant combination attacks that can bypass every form of defense and snuff out the lives of hundreds of people?"

Sara grimaced. "Their answer is the same. The Penitent Sisters don't attribute this capability to their mechs or themselves. They all believe it's the Superior Mother at work!"

Suffice to say, Sara and Dulo Voiken did not gain as much as they wanted. The Penitent Sisters were some of the strongest and most effective soldiers of the Larkinson Clan, but the source of much of their impressive combat strength sounded like fantasy rather than a serious design solution!

As the Voikens spent time among the other mech legions, they couldn't get used to the other quirks of the Larkinson Clan.

One of the cultural aspects that they were not accustomed to was how close and casual everyone behaved around each other.

Though the clansmen serving in the Larkinson Army behaved with decorum whenever they needed to, many times they just threw aside all formality and joked around with each other as if they were buddies drinking in a bar!

This sort of behavior wasn't only confined to the lower ranks.

There were plenty of instances where Sara and Dulo Voiken had seen officers joking around with enlisted personnel and vice versa.

The boundaries within the hierarchy were especially blurred when they paid a visit to the Flagrant Vandals!

"You're back, Rosa!"

"Heh, did you think you could keep me away for long?" Venerable Rosa Orfan grinned. She lifted up the bottles that were intertwined between her fingers. "I brought presents this time! Let's open these up and see whether the Rubarthans know their beer."

Sara and Dulo were not unaccustomed to seeing expert pilots. The Voiken Family raised several of them and had even more on retainer.

The expert pilots working for the Voiken Family were all treated with great respect. It was impossible to see anyone casually walking up to them and engage in small talk in their former family!

"This…" Dulo trailed off. "The Larkinson Clan sure handles matters differently."

Sara remained quiet for a while. Once she got over the shock of how the members of the Larkinson Clan treated each other so casually despite the differences in rank and status, she figured out an explanation.

"Family."

"What?"

"The reason why these Larkinsons behave so close is because they genuinely treat each other like family." She clarified.

"I can see that, sister, but the Voikens we spent time with back home are family as well, but we always respected our elders without fail."

"The Larkinson Clan is different. Many of them are inducted into it like us, but they aren't treated as outsiders at all. It's amazing if you think about it. This is what a true family should look like. I can see that the higher ups genuinely love and respect the people they lead."

Dulo looked impressed. "That does sound amazing."

"It's because of this weird network that the Larkinsons connected to our heads. It allows them to open up to each other in a way that is more truthful and direct than any other familiarization method that I have heard of. It is incredible to see how one unique feature can completely change the dynamics of this clan. We're part of a new kind of society, one that can better bind different people together."

The people who were part of the Larkinson Clan in the early stages were all used to this phenomenon, but the new recruits always became shocked at how easy it was to get close to other clansmen.

Dulo grew shocked as he realized another important implication!

"Sister!"

"Yes, brother?"

"Have you noticed that none of the Larkinsons have ever displayed any fear or suspicion whether anyone here is a Crown terrorist?"

Sara Voiken widened her eyes. "You mean… they can't stay hidden within the Larkinson Clan?"

They followed up on this matter by quizzing a few Larkinsons on this topic.

It turned out that the clansmen never worried about this possibility!

"Heh, those other orgs might worry themselves to death, but our clan is different." An officer of the Flagrant Vandals spoke with pride. "It starts with recruitment. We don't let in any shady people, you see. We've become extremely good at stopping any suspicious people before they can enter our clan. They have to gain the approval of the Golden Kitty, you see."

"The Golden… Kitty?"

The officer pointed at the emblem of the Golden Cat that had been painted on the surface of a bulkhead. "Our mascot! Don't you know? The Golden Kitty is watching over all of us! Just ask the Avatars of Myth. They erected their own statues of her in order to deepen their relationship with her, and I don't blame them. The Golden Kitty is the heart of our family."

Every Larkinson had a high opinion of the Golden Cat. No matter who they asked, they not only believed this mystical cat was real, but also helped them out in battle!

"Is the Golden Cat a god?"

"Of course not! She's the Golden Cat!"

"And that is different from a god?"

"Yes! Gods don't exist."

"Then how do you describe the Golden Cat when everything I've heard about her sounds as if she is a god?!"

"She's the Golden Cat! I can't explain it any better than that. She's just… there whenever I close my eyes and think about family or the Larkinson Clan. She's not one of those non-existent sky gods who people made up in order to spread a false belief. The Golden Cat is a real cat, but an invisible one. You can feel her but you can't observe her. Well, I've heard some Larkinsons who have claimed to see the Golden Cat with their own eyes, but I haven't received this honor yet. I hope I'll get my chance one day."

As the Voikens kept rotating from mech legion to mech legion, they became more aware of certain kinds of existences that the Larkinsons couldn't clearly define but were apparently real!

All of them sounded like gods, and several groups such as the Penitent Sisters and the Ylvainans literally treated them as such.

What surprised the Voikens quite a lot was that even the secularists treated these strange and powerful existences as gods even if they did not use this exact term!

All of this generated a lot of questions and confusion for the Voiken siblings.

"Are the Larkinsons really consorting with gods or are they all being deceived?" Sara Voiken wondered.